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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2025.43

Space Complexity of Minimum Cut Problems in Single-Pass Streams

Authors: Matthew Ding, Alexandro Garces, Jason Li, Honghao Lin, Jelani Nelson, Vihan Shah, and David P. Woodruff

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 325, 16th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2025)

Abstract

We consider the problem of finding a minimum cut of a weighted graph presented as a single-pass stream. While graph sparsification in streams has been intensively studied, the specific application of finding minimum cuts in streams is less well-studied. To this end, we show upper and lower bounds on minimum cut problems in insertion-only streams for a variety of settings, including for both randomized and deterministic algorithms, for both arbitrary and random order streams, and for both approximate and exact algorithms. One of our main results is an Õ(n/ε) space algorithm with fast update time for approximating a spectral cut query with high probability on a stream given in an arbitrary order. Our result breaks the Ω(n/ε²) space lower bound required of a sparsifier that approximates all cuts simultaneously. Using this result, we provide streaming algorithms with near optimal space of Õ(n/ε) for minimum cut and approximate all-pairs effective resistances, with matching space lower-bounds. The amortized update time of our algorithms is Õ(1), provided that the number of edges in the input graph is at least (n/ε²)^{1+o(1)}. We also give a generic way of incorporating sketching into a recursive contraction algorithm to improve the post-processing time of our algorithms. In addition to these results, we give a random-order streaming algorithm that computes the exact minimum cut on a simple, unweighted graph using Õ(n) space. Finally, we give an Ω(n/ε²) space lower bound for deterministic minimum cut algorithms which matches the best-known upper bound up to polylogarithmic factors.

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Matthew Ding, Alexandro Garces, Jason Li, Honghao Lin, Jelani Nelson, Vihan Shah, and David P. Woodruff. Space Complexity of Minimum Cut Problems in Single-Pass Streams. In 16th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 325, pp. 43:1-43:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{ding_et_al:LIPIcs.ITCS.2025.43,
  author =	{Ding, Matthew and Garces, Alexandro and Li, Jason and Lin, Honghao and Nelson, Jelani and Shah, Vihan and Woodruff, David P.},
  title =	{{Space Complexity of Minimum Cut Problems in Single-Pass Streams}},
  booktitle =	{16th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS 2025)},
  pages =	{43:1--43:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-361-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{325},
  editor =	{Meka, Raghu},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2025.43},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-226714},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2025.43},
  annote =	{Keywords: minimum cut, approximate, random order, lower bound}
}

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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2024.46

Deterministic Minimum Steiner Cut in Maximum Flow Time

Authors: Matthew Ding and Jason Li

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 308, 32nd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2024)

Abstract

We devise a deterministic algorithm for minimum Steiner cut, which uses (log n)^{O(1)} maximum flow calls and additional near-linear time. This algorithm improves on Li and Panigrahi’s (FOCS 2020) algorithm, which uses (log n)^{O(1/ε⁴)} maximum flow calls and additional O(m^{1+ε}) time, for ε > 0. Our algorithm thus shows that deterministic minimum Steiner cut can be solved in maximum flow time up to polylogarithmic factors, given any black-box deterministic maximum flow algorithm. Our main technical contribution is a novel deterministic graph decomposition method for terminal vertices that generalizes all existing s-strong partitioning methods, which we believe may have future applications.

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Matthew Ding and Jason Li. Deterministic Minimum Steiner Cut in Maximum Flow Time. In 32nd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 308, pp. 46:1-46:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{ding_et_al:LIPIcs.ESA.2024.46,
  author =	{Ding, Matthew and Li, Jason},
  title =	{{Deterministic Minimum Steiner Cut in Maximum Flow Time}},
  booktitle =	{32nd Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2024)},
  pages =	{46:1--46:14},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-338-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{308},
  editor =	{Chan, Timothy and Fischer, Johannes and Iacono, John and Herman, Grzegorz},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2024.46},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-211174},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2024.46},
  annote =	{Keywords: graph algorithms, minimum cut, deterministic}
}

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Space Complexity of Minimum Cut Problems in Single-Pass Streams

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Deterministic Minimum Steiner Cut in Maximum Flow Time

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